Interview with the Vampire Relationships, Ranked 

One of the show’s greatest achievements is refusing to divide its characters into heroes or villains. So we’re left with flawed characters in dire need of therapy.

Spoiler warning: this ranking covers all of IWTV and The Vampire Lestat. 

At the San Diego Comic-Con, AMC announced Season 4, Queen of the Damned, continuing its tradition of naming seasons after Anne Rice’s novels.

It’s spooky season, and every character in the IWTV universe makes for a great Halloween choice. But who should you choose, and what does your choice say about you and your relationships? 

Background

If you’ve somehow avoided this show until now, Interview with the Vampire is exactly what the title promises: an interview. Veteran journalist Daniel Molloy sits down with Louis de Pointe du Lac, the vampire Armand, and eventually Lestat de Lioncourt, uncovering centuries of love, loss, betrayal, and the horrors of immortality. 

But memory is a beast. As Louis tells us in season one, memory is “the odyssey of recollection.” We soften certain moments, sharpen others, and rearrange events until they fit the emotions we carried away. 

For two seasons, we saw everything through Louis’ recollections. But every story has two sides, and The Vampire Lestat lets Lestat tell his own. What we get in the end isn’t necessarily the factual truth, but it’s a fuller picture.

Under the blood and gothic horror, showrunner Rolin Jones has built a story about relationships: romance, family, parenthood, abuse, grief, and the desperate need to be loved.

So I ranked all the relationships on the show, because they drive the stories. My criteria include: how much damage they do to each other, how much damage they do to everyone nearby, and whether anyone would survive a couples therapy session. 

If you disagree with my ranking, feel free to drop a comment or two. 

6. Claudia and Madeline

Toxicity: 3/10

Status: Dead (×2) | Relationship: Lovers.

Verdict: The only healthy relationship in the show, and this is why we can’t have nice things.

After decades of searching for someone who sees her and chooses her, Claudia finally finds Madeline. Already beaten down by the human world, Madeline isn’t afraid of Claudia. She doesn’t ask Claudia to be smaller, softer, or easier to love. She simply chooses her, and Claudia chooses her back.

Madeline’s turning is one of the most beautiful moments in the IWTV. It’s everything Claudia spent decades searching for, and ironically, everything Lestat always wanted for himself: someone who saw every broken, monstrous part of him and stayed anyway.

Their ending is the show’s most devastating tragedy because theirs was the one relationship with the power to heal everyone else. Louis might have learned to let go. Armand and Louis might have started on different foundations. Louis and Lestat might have looked at Claudia and Madeline and learned to love each other better. 

In the end, we’re left with so many what-ifs and mights.

5. Armand and Daniel

Toxicity: 5/10

Status: Undead (×2) | Relationship: Maker and fledgling. Something stranger.

Verdict: A maker who abandons his fledgling is a red flag in any century.

Imagine meeting someone, looking into their future, and deciding that killing them would be an act of mercy. That’s Armand’s first encounter with young Daniel Molloy, when he goes into Daniel’s mind to understand what Louis finds so fascinating about this reckless journalist. He sees a life of misery ahead and would have killed Daniel, in the name of salvation, had Louis not interfered.

Their connection is set, and decades later, the consequences explode. Eventually, Armand turns Daniel. Whether it was out of spite for  Louis or love remains to be seen, as he immediately abandons him. 

Daniel seems to be faring better than expected for a fledgling vampire with no mentor, but Armand has more in store. And after the events of Episode 6 of TVL, I don’t know how much longer Lestat will leave Daniel alive.

4. Claudia, Louis, and Lestat

Toxicity: 7/10

Status: Dead (1), Undead (2) | Relationship: Daughter. Sister. Niece. Throw pillow.

Verdict: Forced family… it never ends well

Claudia the vampire is born from guilt, desperation, and a need for restitution. Heavy with loss, Louis needs to make one right decision. Lestat can’t bear losing Louis. Together they create a child who never got to choose.

For a while, they’re happy. Claudia adores Daddy Lou and learns from Uncle Les, and together, they build something that almost resembles a family. Then the world keeps moving for everyone but her. Trapped forever in a fourteen-year-old’s body, she knows no other vampires, has no peers, and sees no future beyond the two men who made her, yet wouldn’t choose her over each other. Her loneliness hardens into rage and resentment.

Claudia is exceptional as a vampire despite the odds against her. She gains cunning from Lestat, compassion from Louis, and eventually becomes better than both at manipulation. But she is also stuck. Louis won’t let her grow up. Lestat resents how completely she has captured Louis’ attention. So Claudia must play them against each other and ultimately orchestrate the plot that would have ended Lestat’s life to gain her freedom.

This is the relationship I mourn most for what it could have been. If they had become a family, Louis, Lestat, and Claudia would have been the most formidable vampire coven.

3. Louis and Armand

Toxicity: 6/10

Status: Undead (×2) | Relationship: Exes.

Verdict: Hurt people hurt people.

Armand is tragedy made vampire. Five centuries on, he still longs to be loved with the desperation of the child he never got to be. He’s one of the oldest, smartest, most powerful vampires alive, yet he needs someone else to validate his existence. He surrenders completely to the people he loves while quietly manipulating everything around them, because he can’t trust that they’ll stay otherwise. Which is why being the rebound twice hurt enough to make him throw everyone under the bus.

This relationship is doomed almost immediately. Louis doesn’t fall in love with Armand. He tries to fall in love with the possibility of a life without Lestat. Why he chose Lestat’s ex to do it with is as confusing as most of Louis’ choices. 

Armand, meanwhile, is captivated by the parts of Louis that connect to his own trauma (Louis was a pimp, remember?), and Louis knows it and exploits it. Why? We’ll leave that one for Louis’ therapist.

They are never alone together despite having the longest-lasting relationship. 

There are secrets, lies, and machinations, lying alongside anxiety, guilt, and a boatload of trauma. All wrapped in a thin veil they both call “love”

The invisible third is Claudia. Even in death, she is a barrier. Every mention of her reminds Armand of the name nobody dares utter: Lestat. Lestat. Lestat. 

2. Louis and Lestat

Toxicity: 8/10

Status: Undead (×2) | Relationship: “…could be.”

Verdict: The most destructive love story on television.

Lestat is nearly two centuries old when he meets Louis. Immortality has taught him that eternity is unbearably lonely, and he doesn’t just want company. He wants someone who can survive forever beside him.

Louis is a wealthy Black “businessman” (he’s a pimp, okay?) who is also queer in 1910 New Orleans. Despite his influence, he lives in a world that will never let him be free. 

Lestat recognizes the strength it took to build that life, and he offers Louis eternity. But Louis can’t let go of his humanity. He grieves his brother, clings to his family, and keeps searching for dignity in a society that was never built for him. 

Lestat, shaped by decades of trauma, can’t understand why Louis refuses the freedom vampirism offers. Neither of them knows how to communicate, and neither knows what a healthy relationship looks like. Then they make Claudia, who’s meant to save them, but exposes every crack already running through their marriage. 

And yet, through every betrayal, separation, and multiple attempts to move on, they keep choosing each other above everyone else. Even above the daughter they made together. 

Now, after decades of hurting each other and everyone around them, they’re asking the same question that has haunted them since New Orleans: who else could understand them?

They love each other desperately, but whether love is enough remains to be seen.

1. Lestat and Gabrielle

Toxicity: 10/10

Status: Undead (×2) | Relationship: Mother. Maker. Emotional enmeshment.

Verdict: Sometimes you have to scream to make it stop. Biggest ick.

Gabrielle and Lestat are the only ones with a relationship before immortality. As mother and son in a hateful family, both were marginalized and mocked. But Gabriella was Lestat’s mother; her duty was to love and protect him. Her interpretation of love would traumatize him for centuries; his therapist wouldn’t know where to start.

As humans, their boundaries were already blurred. As vampires, those boundaries disappear entirely. Lestat turns Gabrielle to save her life, and she thanks him by making him her lover. He knows something about their connection is deeply wrong, but he keeps returning anyway. Gabrielle knows her power over Lestat and exploits it only when it benefits her.

In the TVL finale, Lestat finds clarity about their relationship. Whether anything changes remains to be seen.

Monsters With Souls

One of the show’s greatest achievements is refusing to divide its characters into heroes and villains. They’re people carrying centuries of grief and trauma, trying to love with wounds they never learned to heal. The vampires may live forever, but their relationships stay painfully human.

Beneath the blood, the violence, and the immortality, Interview with the Vampire lets us examine the full range of humanity under the guise of vampirism. It’s about choices and consequences, love and loss, trauma and survival, and every range of human emotion in between. 

Where do you disagree with my ranking? Tell me in the comments.